Most known lightning protection systems for wind turbine blades comprise one or more internally arranged down conductors and a number of lightning receptors arranged on the external surface of the blade.
It is a well-known problem of such systems, that lightning strikes do not only attach to the wind turbine blade in the intended positions, i.e. on the external attachment points, the so-called lightning receptors, but can also strike the internal conductive parts of the lightning protection system directly through the structure of the blade. Such incidents can cause severe structural damage to the wind turbine blade due to the large amounts of energy typically released in relation to lightning impacts.
Another well-known problem is that external lightning receptors of lightning protection systems can be damaged by lightning impacts and that, therefore, the lifetime of such receptors is limited, depending on the number of lightning impacts to which they are subjected.